Stop making foie gras? Fat chance

FRENCH politicians have approved a draft law that declares foie gras part of the national heritage, despite widespread international concern about cruelty to animals during its production.

With customary Gallic insouciance, lawmakers have effectively given the kind of protection normally accorded great works of art to a dish whose manufacture by force-feeding geese and ducks is banned in 13 other EU member states.

Foie gras - translated literally as "fatty liver" - is big business in France, which produces 70 per cent of the 20,000 tonnes made worldwide each year and accounts for 85 percent of global consumption. The industry employs 30,000 people and the average French person eats the delicacy at least ten times a year.

It is a dish that has been enjoyed since as far back as 2500BC, when Egyptians sought the fattened livers of migratory birds as a delicacy. The practice continued through Roman times and spread across Europe.

But to animal lovers across the world, the practice of force-feeding 30 million animals a year until their livers swell to up to ten times their normal size is a cruel practice which causes untold suffering. In recent years the movement to abolish force-feeding for foie gras production has gained momentum worldwide, but in France, producers have reacted by toughening their stance to protect this most emblematic of Gallic culinary delicacies.

Never had this been made clearer than yesterday, when the French parliament unanimously declared that foie gras constituted "part of the protected cultural and gastronomic heritage of France".

"How on earth can you say that a barbaric custom, consisting of sticking a funnel or a pneumatic pump down the throat of a caged animal, is a tradition of high culture?" asked the Citizens Initiative for the Abolition of Force Feeding on its website yesterday.

Its question was answered by the left-leaning daily, Le Monde, which commented that the measure had been adopted "in order to counter campaigns by defenders of animal rights".

Such groups point out that by the time the force-fed geese and ducks are slaughtered, they are suffering from acute liver disease, diarrhoea, panting, walking difficulties, lesions and inflammations.

The reactionary stance of France over foie gras flies in the face of EU directives dating from as far back as 1998, which warn that: "No animal shall be provided with food or liquid in a manner ... which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury".

Thirteen EU member states, including the UK, have already banned force-feeding of animals for foie gras production and the EU has issued a directive that all member nations must end feeding practices that cause "suffering or damage" by 2010.

Earlier this month Israel, the world's fourth-largest producer of foie gras, banned production of the delicacy on the grounds of cruelty, declaring that force-feeding ran counter to animal protection laws.

"In the light of the report by the Scientific Committee of the European Community, there is no doubt that the geese suffer," the Israeli government said, referring to the EU study which stated that: "Foie gras is the clinically ill liver of a bird suffering from hepatic steatosis" and concluded: "The 'needs of agriculture' must not systematically count more than the interest in protecting the animals".

French MPs dismissed the EU report yesterday, confidently declaring that "the foie gras of a force-fed web-footed [creature] is not clinically ill".

Instead, they added proudly, foie gras "perfectly illustrates the links with heritage and rural life which characterise the originality of the French alimentary model".

The ruling was intended to "preserve the cultural, culinary and social heritage" represented by foie gras while simultaneously monitoring "in an objective, scientifically backed manner ... the respect of the animal's well-being".

The ruling came just nine weeks before French MPs and the majority of their countrymen and women will tuck into the delicacy as a largely unquestioned ritual during traditional Gallic Christmas and New Year festivities.

In France, it seems that a nation of foie gras lovers are more concerned about preserving "gastronomic tradition" than they are about diminishing the suffering of the animals used to produce it.